Blue Eyeshadow Is Back… And I Love It

Something is in the air—spring, allergies, tiny baby birds—and it is driving me to open my wallet and scream “Yas, I want to look like I’m in the chorus of a high school production of Meet Me in St. Louis!” as I throw a very specific shade of blue eye shadow into online shopping carts across the web.

Blue eyeshadow—Yves Klein blue, Barbie blue, turquoise blue, ceruuuulean—is back? Perhaps it never left, but was always lurking in the wings waiting for a moment. As is the case with most trends, I am likely late on this, having only become aware of the possibilities after spending 11 minutes and 43 seconds of my time waiting to see if Kim Kardashian’s makeup artist, Mario, would do an eye look with the bright blue metallic shadow featured in KKW Beauty’s forthcoming eyeshadow palette and feeling disappointed that the final result was just “bronzey.”

I can get “bronzey” any day of the week, Kimberly. What I’m interested in is this look—a bold blue eye that is perfect for the red carpet, the boardroom, the bodega, or your living room. Does Kim Kardashian make you scream and throw things out a window? If so, her blue eyeshadow is not the only blue eyeshadow. Patrick Starrr, a beauty vlogger who might also make you scream and throw things out a window, has a new MAC collaboration out that features an electric blue eyeshadow that is alluring to me in ways I cannot accurately describe. Mother Pat McGrath’s Mothership I: Subliminal eyeshadow palette costs $125—an obscene amount of money to pay for eyeshadow, but the colors are also obscene, so perhaps it checks out? One day, when I’ve fully lost my mind, I will walk into a Sephora and buy it and frankly, I cannot wait.

Sometimes it’s nice to leave the house with your face painted for the back of the room.

There’s something very chic about a blue eye—nicer than black, but somehow harder to execute. It requires precision, a steady hand, the ability to locate one’s “crease” and accurately blend. It’s a challenge. I accept! I want it! No more warm nudes smeared on the eyes and smudged on the lips; part of me rejects the Glossier assertion that makeup should look like you were born a dewy plumpkin with skin like a peau de soie slip dress. That’d be great, sure, but you know what, sometimes it’s nice to leave the house with your face painted for the back of the room.

“I am usually very wary of blue shadow because I don’t want to look like i have an infection or black eye, but this is very nice,” Jezebel senior editor Joanna Rothkopf told me upon viewing Kim’s visage. A fair point, considering that Kim’s makeup artist is a professional and most of us are not; I feel the risk of looking like a consumptive Victorian heroine runs high with blue eyeshadow, but it is a risk that I am willing to take. Life is very short and also so goddamn long and makeup is nothing other than a harmless way to punctuate the long stretches of boredom. Try the blue eyeshadow. See how it goes.